The Cheat, as we both agreed, is becoming less of an intimidating piece of whitewater and more of a well-respected novelty. The named rapids (Big Nasty, Fist, High Falls, Teardrop, Coliseum, and Pete Morgan) get the respect they deserve, but this 10-mile stretch of river packs in more than thirty classifiable rapids that hold countless navigation options. We explore as many of them as we can.
Yesterday proved to be a challenging day on the river for Rob. Just after we had agreed that we are no longer scared of paddling the canyon, he flipped over while trying to find a "tricky" route through one of the lesser rapids. At his skill level, this is barely worth my paying any attention, as his roll is typically initiated immediately and he is righted. However, this time, I watched as his boat bumped around upside down. This is fairly typical as well, and I presumed that he was banging around on rocks in a self-protective tuck position, waiting for the bouncing to stop so he could roll safely. He did. But, where were once two paddle blades only appeared one. Rob had broken his paddle.
For a minute, we watched the smaller portion of the paddle float around in an eddy, and I was very close to picking it up before it sank to the bottom. Rob carefully navigated the rest of the rapid and waited for me at the bottom while I continued to search for half of his paddle.
Cheat Canyon is very remote and very long. Faced with the prospect of a handicapped paddler managing the more than 75% of the run that remained, we considered taking out and walking out. But, Rob's done that before, and he made clear that he didn't necessarily expect that to be much better. After taking out and sitting on a rock on the right bank, we decided to wait for the two rafts we'd passed a mile or so back and stick with them for safety. In the meantime, I found a small piece of driftwood and used medical tape to turn what was Rob's double-bladed kayak paddle only a minute before into a T-handled canoe paddle. It would work. It had to work.
The rafts showed up, and instantly the raft paddlers, who were all guides since they had no "guests" on this particular Wednesday, along with two kayakers, began to reinforce the arrogant and insensitive repuation that raft guides have. They laughed at Rob's predicament (which, granted, was a little funny) and harshly suggested that he'd be eaten alive by the hydraulics at Coliseum. That sealed the deal for Rob, and I'm not at all surprised that nobody wanted to hire these a-holes to guide them down the river.
With the pompous raft guide crew behind us, we set off for Rob's first C-1 experience. (In the paddling world, K-1 refers to a single kayak, K-2 a tandem, OC-1 an open canoe with one paddler, and OC-2 your good old aluminum Grumman. C-1 and C-2 are closed decked canoes with skirts, and the definition of a canoe is a single-bladed craft. Kayaks are double bladed. Rob's boat was instantly redefined to be a canoe.). The water was warm and not too pushy, the sun was beating down on us, and barring any extremely rare circumstances, we figured the worst that could happen would be a swim out of one of the bigger rapids. On a day like this, it might even be a more fun outcome than staying in one's boat.
Rob nailed it. I don't know that I would have done it, but he just kept on keepin' on through each one of the rapids. I crept up on each one looking for the straightest route or the one that only had left turns (turning left was no problem, but Rob couldn't turn right very well) and pointed them out to him. We played Follow the Leader for the most part through the entire canyon, and Rob didn't swim. In fact, Rob didn't even have to roll in any of the major rapids. His single-bladed descents of some of the rapids were even more graceful than my double-bladed descents.
We have a C-1 athlete in the making.At the bottom of the canyon, we came upon a very unique fallen tree wedged between two boulders. The enormous tree provoked a rare appearance of the Monkey Boys. Enjoy the photos.
